Alice Allen and Peter Teuben recently published two interesting papers about code sharing in Astronomy:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.1028

http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.1026

The critical need for code sharing in Astronomy has been thoroughly discussed in the past, but previous attempts to establish a repository of astronomical software failed due to low response from Astronomy software developers. Alice Allen, the editor of the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL), took a different approach by actively  contacting authors of relevant papers published in Astrophysical journals. That approach provided the new Astrophysics Source Code Library, which is now not just the most comprehensive repository for Astrophysical software, but actually aims at changing the culture of software development and code sharing in Astronomy.

The Astrophysics Source Code Library is now indexed by ADS so that each code submitted to ASCL is visible to ADS queries, leading to the new paradigm according which software can be cited (the software itself is cited, rather than a paper describing the software). These citations are counted by ADS, making software academically formal (while also making software sharing a little less thankless).

To keep pushing this positive effort forward, I strongly advise Astronomy software developers and users to do the following:

a. Submit their software to ASCL so it can be indexed by ADS and keep ASCL complete.

b. When a software is used in research, cite the ASCL entry of the software in the paper describing the research. If the software is also described in a paper, cite both the paper and the ASCL entry of the software.

c. When reviewing papers that use software, remind the author(s) to cite the ASCL entry of the software.

d. When submitting or reviewing an NSF proposal, make sure that the software funded by the NSF grant will be publicly available through ASCL.

This will help moving forward the ASCL and will hopefully lead to a significant and much-needed cultural change in scientific software sharing. While software is of acute need to modern Astronomical research, software is still not as highly regarded as papers. The ASCL is an excellent tool to change that and make the role of software in Astronomy research more formal.